The Second Bottle of Mead

After seeing this in our beer closet earlier this week, we were quite cautious with handling our last two bottles of mead.


The ideal gas law states that the pressure of a gas in a fixed volume is proportional to the temperature of that gas; not wanting to experience any more explosions (they are great to write about but not so much fun to clean up), we carefully lowered the temperature of our two remaining bottles of mead. The first step was to don the appropriate gear -- I had visions of a bottle exploding into Dale's face, so insisted that he wear full personal protective equipment, including leather gloves and his welding face shield. If we owned body armor, Dale would have been wearing that as well. We don't, so I settled on a thick jacket.


Having at our disposal a couple of acre-feet of solidified water, Dale filled a cooler with snow and prepared to transfer the bottles.


I documented the mead transfer for life insurance purposes while Dale very carefully transferred both bottles of mead into the snow-filled cooler.


He carefully packed the bottles in the snow and we let the cooler sit in the garage.


Six hours later, Dale decided to open the first bottle. Not convinced that the sink would hold the explosion fizz-over (or at least, convinced that it would be difficult to clean the sink after the mead exploded over it), Dale decided to open the first bottle over the dog bath in the garage. I somehow forgot to enforce the personal protective equipment policy and Dale opened the bottle wearing only his leather gloves and jacket. He did, however, point the neck of the bottle away from his face (and away from mine!).


He carefully opened the bottle ... and nothing happened.


Sure, there were a few small bubbles rising to the top of the bottle, but no fizzing and certainly no explosion! It was one of the most anticlimactic moments I've experienced in a long time. In fact, I was almost sad that it didn't explode at least a little!

Dale poured two glasses and we enjoyed our very slightly fizzy mead, wondering as we drank it how one bottle became so highly pressurized that it exploded with such force that it launched itself off a shelf and embedded itself in the ceiling, while another bottle was so slightly pressurized that it barely fizzed when we opened it. Lowering the temperature should help, but lowering the temperature from 75F to freezing should have resulted in only about a 10% reduction in the pressure, which shouldn't have accounted for the vast difference we saw. This may be one of life's mysteries that we'll never fully understand!



By the way, we opened the third (and final) bottle the next day; like the second bottle, it barely fizzed.

Feeling Better

Thank you to everyone for keeping Adelaida in your thoughts and prayers this week! She has recovered quite well from the scary times on Monday and Tuesday when she was having trouble breathing. She is still not 100% better, but is getting back to her normal self. She is still congested and coughing and more tired than normal, but has enough energy to walk around the house and laugh at the pups and close herself in various rooms. (Why are kids so fascinated by doors?)

I was happy to have Dale come home from California a day early. Although he was scheduled to return on Friday, he finished everything he needed to do in California on Thursday and was able to come home Thursday evening. I don't sleep as well when Dale is gone (I somehow hear every little sound our house makes and wake up often!), so was very happy to have a restful night's sleep on Thursday night! I also went in to work on Friday afternoon, after a full week's absence, while Dale kept Adelaida.

Adelaida certainly missed her Daddy! She was so excited to see him when he walked in on Thursday night and spent quite a bit of time cuddling with him Thursday and Friday. Here are some pictures I took of them together:

Dale joins the dark side

For years, Dale has proudly shunned Facebook. He laughed at me for joining Facebook and felt a camaraderie with the dwindling minority of our friends who weren't "on" Facebook.

All that changed last weekend. This is a picture I surreptitiously took of Dale when he told me he had joined Facebook -- see the huge grin on his face?


This is probably old news to most of you, since Dale already has 73 confirmed friends! But if you haven't friended him yet, please do so! Already he spends more time on Facebook than I do, and has probably made more status updates in his seven days than I've made in my several years on Facebook :)

Beware Exploding Bottles of Mead!

On Monday evening, I was doing some overdue cleaning, including cleaning the floor in the sunroom. I opened the beer/sports closet (it's a closet that we plan to use for sporting equipment, but currently holds beer equipment and home-brewed beer in various stages of fermentation) and realized the closet floor was covered in dirt and dog hair. (How does all that dirt and dog hair collect in a closet that stays closed almost all the time anyway?) I cleaned the floor, closed the door, and moved on.

That night, I was up late with Adelaida and heard a very loud noise (like a loud bang, or a door slamming, or something really heavy falling to the ground) coming from inside the house. With Dale gone, I was naturally more sensitive to such noises, but almost convinced myself that I had imagined it -- after all, the dogs would be barking if anything suspicious had happened, and we have an alarm on our house that would sound a siren and call the police if any of the doors or windows had been opened. I made a quick check through the house to make sure everything was in its place, talked to the pups a bit, confirmed that I had set the alarm and that the doors were all locked, and went to bed.

Fast-forward to today. Being stuck in the house all week, I've been catching up on cleaning and today was organizing the kitchen. There were a couple of empty beer bottles on the counter -- rinsed and waiting to be refilled with beer -- that really belong in the beer/sports closet. I took them to the closet, stepped inside the closet to put them in the "empty beer bottle" box, and realized that my slippers were sticking to the floor. Given that I had just cleaned the floor two days ago, that was especially puzzling to me. I checked the floor in some other areas -- also sticky -- and followed the stickiness up to the top shelf.

That's when I saw this:


Yes, a bottle of mead had exploded, leaving the bottom of the bottle sitting on the shelf, the body of the bottle embedded in the ceiling, and mead everywhere.

It must have been a pretty big explosion to embed the top of the bottle in the ceiling as well as it did!


Looking back, I shouldn't be surprised that this happened. Mead is honey-based wine and, like most wines, is generally not carbonated. Dale prepared the mead the first week in October, transferred it from one fermenter to another several times, and let it sit in the final fermenter for several weeks without seeing any evidence of further fermentation. We bottled it in early December, two months after starting the process. We opened a bottle in late December and drank it without noticing anything unusual. Six weeks later, we opened another bottle with friends in Colorado and noticed immediately that the mead was carbonated. That was weird, but we thought perhaps the fermentation process had continued in the bottles, so we realized we might have slightly carbonated mead (like champagne, a carbonated wine!). Apparently the fermentation process has continued even more, enough to cause a bottle to explode!

It even makes sense that the explosion happened in the middle of the night. The beer/sports closet is an interior room on the ground floor, which is heated by radiant heat in the slab. In the winter, our radiant heat comes on in the evening and runs overnight. The beer/sports closet has a heating pipe running under the floor and the closet door is kept closed, so the heat stays in the closet and the closet actually gets quite warm. Heat will increase the pressure of the gas inside the bottle, increasing the likelihood of an explosion. In retrospect, this shouldn't have been a surprise!

One final note: we've been distributing these bottles of mead to people since Christmas -- if you received one, it might be best to go ahead and open it now (over the sink, in case it fizzes over when opened), before you end up with a similar mess!

A Sick Little Girl

Dale and I woke up early yesterday morning and realized Adelaida had a fever, and that it was high enough to warrant giving her a fever reducer to keep it at a reasonable level. This wasn't too unusual, as she's been pretty sick for the past ten months and often has high fevers. I called her school and told them that she wouldn't be in today, gave her ibuprofen, and put her back to bed. Two hours later she was awake again, and this time I realized that this was more than just another cold. She was burning up (her temperature was 104.6F even after taking the ibuprofen two hours before) and was having trouble breathing -- she was breathing very rapidly, almost gasping for breath, and her nostrils were flaring with each breath.

I looked at her chest to see if she was using her rib muscles to breathe (she wasn't, which was a good sign) and called our nurse helpline. They recommended that we get to the nearest hospital as soon as possible, so I loaded Adelaida into the car and went straight to the hospital. (Of course it was snowing and the roads were very slick, and Dale was already on a flight headed toward California for the week for work. But I remained calm and we got to the hospital without any incident.)

Once they got us checked in at the pediatric urgent care, we were given a room almost immediately and Adelaida was given more medicine to reduce her fever. The nurse who checked us in was sufficiently worried to have another nurse look at Adelaida before leaving us, and a doctor came into the room just a few minutes later. It was the fastest service I've ever had at the pediatric urgent care center!

The doctor listened to Adelaida's breathing and to my recital of events and concluded that she had a respiratory virus called RSV. RSV is very common and can range from mild (nothing more than cold-like symptoms) to severe (requiring several days' worth of hospitalization with oxygen given through a ventilator). Adelaida's RSV seemed to be somewhere in the middle -- she was obviously having trouble breathing and her lips actually turned blue while we were with the doctor because she wasn't getting enough oxygen. He set her up with oxygen and we sat in the exam room for a couple of hours just letting Adelaida breathe oxygen-rich air. After several hours of this, we saw the doctor again and were released, with a long list of things for me to watch for that would necessitate taking her back in.

Because RSV is a virus, nothing can really be done for it except to give the kids oxygen if needed. However, Adelaida also had an ear infection, so we picked up some antibiotics on the way home and got her started on antibiotics last night. She is still having trouble breathing today, but is otherwise doing much better -- she even ate about 1/4 of a banana and a few dices of tomato today (she didn't eat anything all day yesterday!).

The silver lining to this cloud is that Adelaida lets me hold her while she's sick -- she doesn't exactly cuddle, but she sat on my lap with her head leaning back against my chest for hours in the hospital yesterday, and wants me to hold her while I'm walking around at home, as shown in the pictures here. Of course I hate to see her sick, but do enjoy holding her close to me!

Adelaida's Cabinet

Adelaida tests out her cabinet ... she fits!

A few months ago, we realized that we had a challenge to deal with in the kitchen: Adelaida was fascinated by the dogs' water bowls. She was mobile and always crawled directly to the water bowls. We wanted to keep her away from them for two reasons: because they were the dogs' bowls and we didn't want Adelaida to get in the pups' way when they needed water; and because the standing water of the bowls was a drowning hazard.

We first tried the "redirect" method of keeping her away from the bowls: every time she crawled to the bowls, we picked her up and put her somewhere else. This worked for a few weeks while she was not a very good crawler, but Adelaida soon decided this was a game and laughed when we moved her, then immediately went back to the bowls to play the game again.

Adelaida sits happily in her cabinet

The real problem was that we didn't have much in the kitchen for Adelaida to play with: she didn't have any toys in the kitchen or sunroom and we would occasionally give her a wooden spoon to play with, but the wooden spoon was kept in a drawer and she couldn't get to it herself.

the half-deep shelf in the cabinet is a great place for Adelaida to store her kitchen toys

About the same time, Adelaida learned that she could open the kitchen cabinets and delighted in doing so whenever she could. She was particularly fond of the cabinet directly under the sink, which is where we keep the trash can as well as potentially hazardous chemicals like dish soap and dishwasher detergent.

It was becoming more and more difficult to have Adelaida in the kitchen while we were cooking or cleaning up.

Adelaida's cabinet

About a month ago, Dale came up with a brilliant idea: let Adelaida have a cabinet all her own, one she could put some toys in and open and close as much as she wanted! We had just the cabinet -- it was empty anyway and was on the kitchen-table-side of the peninsula rather than the kitchen-side of the peninsula, so she could play there and stay out of our way while we worked in the kitchen. We stocked this cabinet with some special kitchen toys that she only gets to play with in the kitchen -- two wooden spoons, a plastic spoon, two plastic buckets, and a tea tin. With that select of things to bang with and things to bang on, she can create a wide variety of sounds!

Adelaida is happy in her cabinet

Adelaida just loves her cabinet. Whenever we are in the kitchen and she isn't eating, she goes directly to her cabinet, opens it up, and either crawls inside to play or pulls out some spoons and walks around with them. And she does both with the biggest smile on her face!

We don't ever have to tell her to stay away from the dogs' water bowls anymore and she rarely opens any other cabinets in the kitchen. After all, why would she open a cabinet with a trash can or boring muffin tins when she can open her very own cabinet that she can crawl right into?

Adelaida stands by her cabinet

Now that she has a cabinet, she has been more interested in drawers -- Adelaida often takes the spoons and tea tin from her cabinet, walks them over to the kitchen desk, puts them in a drawer (the middle drawer, which is just the right size for her), and picks up two things from the drawer to take back to her cabinet. I think our next job may be to empty one drawer in our kitchen desk and stock it with more fun toys for Adelaida.

A Visit to Colorado: Jumping, Eating, (not) Sleeping

I had a few more pictures from our trip to Colorado that I'd like to share with you.

On Friday, Dale, Adelaida, and I were walking through a shopping area and saw something that caught our eyes: a store front with the name "Jumpin" and what appeared to be several giant blow-up bouncy castles inside. We were intrigued and walked in, and sure enough it was a store filled with giant blow-up bouncy castles! It was relatively empty (three or four other kids there), and their pricing scheme was so tempting (parents get in free; kids under 2 only $4) that we paid our $4, removed our shoes, and evaluated the different bouncy castles to see which one we wanted to try first.

There were traditional bouncy castles...


...and giant slides...


...and obstacle-course-style bouncy castles (complete with two kids who wanted so badly for Dale to play with them!)...


...and even a toddler play area with a small plastic playset and teeter-totter.


We had fun, Adelaida had fun, and it was well worth the $4 admission fee!

Another very notable part of this trip was Adelaida eating. We taught her the sign language for "eat" so that she can tell us when she's hungry. She's been using it for about two months, but while we were in Colorado she suddenly started using the sign all the time! We thought at first that she might just be testing the sign out -- using it frequently to confirm that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between her signing "eat" and us giving her food.

That theory was blown away when we saw how much she was eating each time she signed. She was really hungry! Our typical day would be: Adelaida wakes up and wants to eat, we feed her for about an hour, she plays for half an hour, Adelaida says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, she plays for half an hour, says she wants to eat, we feed her for an hour, and the whole process repeats. I really think she spent more time eating than she spent awake and not eating!

The fact that she was eating so much during the day made the night-times a little more understandable. Adelaida has always had a tendency to sleep poorly at night when we are traveling: she wakes up frequently, and since we are generally staying with friends or family, we are more likely to get her out of bed and nurse her rather than let her get back to sleep herself. This trip was no exception, and the first night we were on the road I nursed her three times in the middle of the night. The weird thing was that she was ravenously hungry all three times! Even after eating so much during the day, she still wanted to nurse for nutrition rather than just for comfort! The nights got progressively worse until the last night, when Adelaida woke up to nurse six times in the nine hours she slept. Dale and I were exhausted! The frequent night nursings continued after we came home, and we put up with them as long as Adelaida's day-time appetite was so large; for about a week now she's been back to a more normal appetite, so we've been weaning her back to one nursing at night, and last night she slept the entire night without nursing (she did wake up one time, but went back to sleep by herself). I'm really looking forward to regular uninterrupted sleep again!

A Visit to Colorado: Superbowl Party

When we made plans (in October) to visit Colorado, we consulted many calendars to find a weekend that would work for everyone involved, but somehow neglected to consider the Superbowl. So we found ourselves in Colorado for Superbowl weekend, where Brooke and Dave graciously accepted when we invited ourselves to their Superbowl party :)

The party was a whirlwind of food, laughter, reconnecting with old friends, playing with the kids, babysitting a stuffed cat (the babysitter kept "losing" her, but somehow kept being asked to babysit again!), and a third-quarter princess parade (fortunately the television was mounted relatively high and the princesses were all very short!).

Oh, and a football game that I'd rather not remember.

I think the pictures speak for themselves this time, so here they are:

Adelaida sat in the middle of the floor and played with balls while Mackenzie, Elise, and Alexa pretended to be lions (or tigers? or dogs? some four-legged mammal.)


Adelaida and I were proud Colts supporters -- which of course prompted several other, formerly undecided, party-goers to cheer for the Saints.


Part of the princess parade: Gentry, Kylie, Elise, Alexa, and Anna pose in their princess (and Avelanche cheerleader) finest.


Another shot of the princess parade: Anna, Gentry (I'm not sure how the drill made it into the parade?), Kylie, Elise, and Alexa


One of the princesses left her tiara on the coffee table, and Adelaida immediately latched on to it. She knew it was supposed to go on her head, but never quite got it on correctly. She didn't poke her eyes out, either!


Dale found a fellow FCB-supporter in Levi.


Dale is watching the game; Charlotte is watching Adelaida; Adelaida is watching the bigger kids.


Looking back on the Superbowl party, I remember it very fondly, despite the disappointing outcome of the game. Only a fun group like we were with could make such a tough Superbowl loss a good memory!

A Visit to Colorado: Visiting with Friends and Family

After a rather harrowing start, we began our visit to Colorado by flying to Denver for a grand total of $100, for all three of us, round trip. Go Southwest!

Elise was very patient with Adelaida and enjoyed walking around with her

On arriving in Colorado, we reconnected with an old friend. Dale and Andy had worked together at Boeing in Los Angeles several years ago and have kept in touch since then, despite Dale moving to Albuquerque and Andy moving to Denver. When we told them we would be in Colorado, Andy and his wife Kim invited us to their house for some playtime with the kids (they have a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a one-year-old girl) and dinner. We really enjoyed spending time with them and their kids and hope to see them again when we're in Denver.

Anna and Alexa couldn't get enough of Dale's rough-housing!

After dinner and lots of fun with Andy and Kim, we drove up to Loveland to spend two nights with Dave and Brooke, who we had last seen this time last year, when Adelaida was two months old and their girls (Elise, Alexa, and Anna) were four-and-a-half, three, and one-and-a-half. In addition to good opportunities to catch up with Dave and Brooke and to let the girls play together, we arranged for babysitters for both families, and Dave and Brooke joined us on a double date filled with fun and laughter!

Janet holds both Adelaida and Ian, who is two months older than Adelaida

No trip to Loveland is complete without a family get-together, so we met Charlotte, Aunt Karen, Aunt Janet and Uncle Steve, and Janet's daughter-in-law and two grandsons for lunch. It was a short visit, but we were able to spend some time with the family and let them see Adelaida -- a whole year after Janet and Karen had seen Adelaida last, and she had certainly changed in that time!

Adelaida plays with a straw while sitting on Karen's lap

We enjoyed seeing the family for lunch and wish we could have spent more time together, and to seen Dale's cousins who weren't able to attend the lunch. But, with only three days to see everyone, we were happy that Charlotte, Karen, Janet, Steve, Elizabeth, Evan, and Ian were able to meet with us on such short notice.

Adelaida and her Mamaw

After two nights with Dave and Brooke, we spent two days and nights with Charlotte. Adelaida loves her Mamaw and was really excited to see a whole container full of toys that she'd never played with before. We left Adelaida with her Mamaw while we went out on a date with Dave and Brooke, and I think both Adelaida and Charlotte had a good time :)

The short weekend was actually packed with other activities, which I'll post about later.

A Visit to Colorado: Prequel

Last October, Southwest offered incredibly low fares: $25 per person one way between Albuquerque and Denver! We couldn't pass up the opportunity, so purchased tickets for early February. We made the trip last weekend, marveling every few minutes that we were flying to Denver and back for a grand total of $100.

Adelaida watches Dale shovel snow during a previous snowstorm

The trip started out rather inauspiciously. We were scheduled to leave Thursday morning. On Wednesday, Dale went to work as normal and I stayed home with Adelaida, who was recovering from a pretty nasty stomach virus and wasn't yet able to return to school. The snow started falling early Wednesday morning, and by noon the freeway had been closed due to inclement weather.

(For those of you unfamiliar with our home, we live in the East Mountains outside Albuquerque, literally across a mountain range from the city. Albuquerque and the East Mountains are connected by two roads, I-40 and Old Route 66, which run parallel to one another just a few feet apart through the Tijeras Canyon pass. When heavy snowfall or bad weather threaten the pass, I-40 and Rt 66 are often closed -- sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for up to three days.)

So, Adelaida and I were at home in the East Mountains; Dale was at work in Albuquerque, we were scheduled to leave the Albuquerque sunport in less than 24 hours, the freeway was closed, and the snow was still falling.

We've had a very wet winter; the snow started in mid-October and we've had snow on the ground almost continuously since then, with a brief snow-free period at the end of November

I was worried that the freeway wouldn't be open in time for Dale to come home that evening, and he had to be at work early (like 4:00am early) the next morning to work a bit before we left. Also, we had to take the pups to the kennels in Moriarty (even further east from Albuquerque, and an area that often gets a lot of snow) before going into Albuquerque. So, I hastily packed up clothes and toiletries for myself, Dale, and Adelaida, gathered items for the pups, and decided to leave Wednesday afternoon to avoid getting stuck at home.

The only problem: I was already stuck.

2:00pm: I first tried to drive out the driveway, which ended up being a bit of a mistake. I didn't wreck the car or anything, but I came pretty close a few times. Upon leaving the garage, our driveway has a significant incline terminated by a 90-degree angle. So, we have to drive up a hill, then turn left at the top of the hill to continue out the driveway.

This picture was taken in early December, which was the last time we could see any amount of ground through the snow!

I measured the snow when I started trying to get out, and we had eight inches on the driveway (the driveway had been plowed after the last storm by our wonderful neighbors, so the eight inches was all new). I tried a dozen or so times to get the car up the driveway and around the bend, but never managed to have enough momentum to get all the way up. So, I put the car back in the garage and started shoveling the driveway. I focused first on the hill and the curve, assuming that if I were able to get up the hill and around the curve, I'd be able to get out pretty easily.

4:00pm: Ninety back-breaking minutes later, I had a reasonably wide track shoveled up the hill and around the curve. (Adelaida was taking a nap at this time, so I was able to work unimpeded.) I got back in the car and tried again, and after several unsuccessful attempts found myself at the top of the hill, pointed toward the driveway. Success! Afraid of losing my momentum (I'd learned a valuable lesson on the cross-country truck trip of 1998), I continued toward the driveway and got about fifteen feet before getting stuck. All the time that I had been shoveling the driveway, the snow had continued falling, and since I hadn't shoveled anything beyond the curve, the rest of the driveway had well over a foot of snow on it. Our car apparently has a clearance of less than one foot, and when I got out to look at the car, it had a pile of snow in front of it up to the hood. I had been "plowing" the snow with the car!

when people hear that we live in Albuquerque, they often think of a desert like Phoenix: hot and dry. In fact, we have a pretty substantial winter and often get a lot of snow; in March 2005 we got 36 inches in one storm!

By this point I had shoveled about 20% of the driveway and didn't think I could shovel the remaining 80% before our plane left the next morning, but I really didn't want to be stuck so I started shoveling again. So, I called a neighbor and asked him if he could plow our driveway; he was willing to do it, but wouldn't be available until about 5:30, so I got back to work with the shovel. This time I decided to just scrape off the top four or so inches of snow and leave the rest, except around the tires where I had to get down to the gravel.

5:30pm: After another hour of shoveling snow and "rocking" a car all by myself, the car was free and I was able to get it out to the end of the driveway. I didn't want to put it in the road (we're at a curve and I could just see someone losing control at the turn and sliding into the car), so left it a few feet in the driveway. By the way, Adelaida had woken up just after I got the car stuck, so she spent most of that hour playing in the back of the car while I shoveled snow!

Maggie and Murphy struggle through snow as deep as they are tall

Finally I was ready to leave, almost. I still had a few things to pack from Adelaida's room (I didn't want to pack them while she was sleeping), then had to carry all the luggage out to the road, take the pups out to the road, and finally take Adelaida out to the car. It was 6:00 and I had been trying to get out for over four hours!

The pups' kennel closed at 7:00, so I had to get to Moriarty within an hour, which I was able to do -- just barely. The kennel is usually about a thirty-minute drive, and I admit I was a little scared to be driving all alone (with a baby and two dogs who wouldn't stay in the back of the car) on deserted roads, some of which hadn't been plowed very recently, in the dark in a snowstorm. Visions of getting stuck in a remote area without cellphone coverage haunted me on that drive. As I passed several vehicles stuck in the snow on the side of the road (or right in the middle of the road, on at least two occasions) I also really missed having a functional all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive vehicle.

I got to the kennel at 7:00, dropped the pups off, and drove back into Albuquerque (normally a one-hour drive), arriving at almost 9:00 that night. I was hungry, exhausted, and very sore, and Adelaida was hungry. I'm sure neither of us was very pleasant to be around that evening! Dale had gotten a hotel for us and was out picking up food when we arrived. We basically brought all our luggage in to the hotel, ate (and food had never tasted so good!), and went to sleep. Dale got up early the next morning to go to work; I slept in a little longer, then rearranged and repacked our luggage, picked Dale up at work, and drove to the airport.

It was a rough beginning to what turned out to be a really great trip -- but more about that later.

Her First Tumble

Our loyal readers may remember that we started teaching Adelaida how to go up and down the stairs about two months ago. She caught on very quickly and soon was going up and down the stairs like a pro.

As Adelaida got better at going up and down stairs, Dale and I became more complaisant about watching her when she was on the stairs. We still didn't let her go up or down all by herself, but sometimes went up at our normal pace while Adelaida slowly made her way up the stairs behind us. And we never did put a gate at the top of the stairs.

Our staircase is set up very nicely in that it has three landings, separated by three to five steps each; we reasoned that if she were to fall, she would fall at most five steps before getting to a landing, which would probably stop her fall. We also kept the foam pad at the bottom of the stairs so that, if she did fall, she would fall onto a foam pad rather than the tile.

About a week ago, I was working at the computer in our bedroom while Adelaida was playing in the bedroom next to me. She became bored with the toys I had for her in the bedroom and soon crawled over to the door. She played with the door for a while (she loves to open and close doors), then crawled through the door toward the staircase. Our bedroom door is directly at the top of the staircase, and Adelaida sat on the floor outside the bedroom in such a way that she could lean forward and see me, or lean back to make me hidden behind the wall. We played peek-a-boo like this for a while, Adelaida giggling every time she leaned in to see me.

Adelaida rolled down eight steps before stopping at a landing!

I was very aware of her sitting at the top of the staircase, but she was enjoying our peek-a-boo game and is very good at going down the stairs, so I wasn't worried. Then I heard what sounded like a bowling ball rolling down the stairs. I looked out the door, couldn't see Adelaida, and was running down the steps before she even started crying. She had fallen down the stairs, rolling down eight steps (and past one landing) before stopping at the second landing on the staircase.

After a quick check to make sure she had no broken bones, I started making funny faces and nibbling on her belly, and within a minute she was laughing and had forgotten all about the fall. She crawled back up the stairs and has since gone up and down the stairs several times without any hesitation.

Note: the picture of Adelaida on the landing is a dramatization taken later; the last thing I was thinking about when she fell was taking a picture of her!

An Adelaida-Sized Chair

For Christmas, Adelaida's Grandpa and Grandma gave her a chair of her very own. It is a beautiful chair, pink and purple with green accents, a ruffly base, and a butterfly. It suits Adelaida's personality perfectly!



The chair is exactly the right size for Adelaida. That's not to say that she doesn't have extra room sitting in it -- there's plenty of extra room, and her feet don't even reach the end of the seat, let alone touch the ground. She'll be growing into this chair for several more years. But it is just her size in that it is too narrow and too short for me or Dale to sit in, and neither Maggie nor Murphy has tried to sit in it yet!

Adelaida's favorite way to use the chair so far has been to climb on it. She can climb from the ground up to the seat, and if the chair is against our couch, can climb from the seat onto the arms of the chair and up to the couch. This has opened up a whole new exciting world for Adelaida, and she often climbs up the chair onto the couch only to slide off the couch and onto the ground and repeat the entire process.

Occasionally, she surprises us by climbing into her chair and then turning around and sitting in it, as if she realizes that sitting in it is the chair's intended purpose.